News

This February brings the very serious matter of the Salter & King Aldeburgh Marmalade Competition 2018! Drop in a jar of your best 2018 marmalade to the shop by 21st February to be considered for the Champion’s Cup!...

We are looking for open-minded hard working apprentice butcher to join our small team. Based in our shop in Aldeburgh, the role will also include working front of house so good customer service skills essential.  The position is full time including Saturdays...

Hogget is the word used to describe a lamb in its second spring or summer – so aged between one and two years. Superb roasted, slow cooked, pan-fried or grilled, hogget is as versatile as it is flavourful.

I wonder if anyone heard the Food Programme with Sheila Dillon last week. Its focus was on the steep decline in lamb-eating in the under 30s. Apparently, the young have no taste for this wonderful meat, which is such a pity. Perhaps it is too fatty, or intimidating for them to cook - I don’t know. Lamb is such a treat for us over 30s!

At Easter we always eat sheep of some variety or other from one of our farmers, but not always lamb. It’s great to be able to have a choice as lamb, hogget and mutton have quite different characteristics.  Read our guide to find out more.

Now in its third year, Aldeburgh Mutton Week is a heartfelt attempt to bring mutton produced on local, small-scale Suffolk farms to a wider audience. This year our mutton is produced at White House Farm, Great Glemham – from sheep extensively farmed on the lush and unspoilt meadows of the Alde Valley.  

Quail has a certain exoticism, evoking candlelit banquets, heavy with game and pork and red wine. A wintery treat. They’re such pretty birds: related to the pheasant and originating from the east (most modern breeds come from the Japanese strain), they are good flyers and are known to emigrate long distances - England to Africa is not unthinkable for a cold wild quail.

My Mumbai-an friend Rawat is head chef at the highly acclaimed Sea Spice Indian restaurant that has recently opened in Aldeburgh. It’s a great place, and we often provide some carefully chosen meat for the menu. Rawat has come up with a new ‘special’ for Autumn that I’m very excited about -  East Suffolk Muntac Vindaloo.

Every year at the start of bbq season I get excited by the idea that simply splitting and flattening a chicken can be such a game-changer. Not only does spatchcocking halve the cooking time of a bird whilst allowing the meat to remain on the bone and retain its flavour, it also exposes more skin for the marinade to hold on to, and it helps the meat to cook more evenly.

My brother-in-law, who is much younger than me, always had a sophisticated palette. At the age of twelve, when I first met him, he declared that ‘bavette is much the best cut of beef.’ Of course, he’s embarrassed about his pretension now – for a start, these days he would call it ‘skirt’ not ‘bavette’; and furthermore, he wouldn’t assume to tell his butcher brother-in-law which bit of beef is best.